"The basic interest that guides our policy on volunteering is the recognition that the government alone cannot meet all the needs in society and therefore has to encourage all members of society to exercise their rights, live up to their responsibilities and participate fully in society" (Statement of the Netherlands, 36^th meeting of the UN Commission for Social Development, February 2001).

At the core of international development cooperation is the pressing need to address the issue of poverty and incorporate into poverty reduction those strategic actions which tackle its root causes as well as those which deal with its manifestations. In almost all societies the most basic of all values is people helping people and, in the process, helping themselves. Indeed, voluntary mutual aid or self-help is typically the ultimate safety net of the poor or, put another way, extreme poverty can be expressed in terms of situations where a poor person or household has no friends or neighbours to whom to turn for help to mitigate risks and to cope with the effects of shocks.

People help one another in countless ways - from participating in burial societies to patrolling streets to make them safe; from replacing roofs on houses after a storm to providing community care for HIV/AIDS victims; from contributing labour to build child care facilities to donating blood. Research by the World Bank shows that increases in the incidence of people working together has the greatest proportional impact on the poverty of the poorest. It also points to the positive impact of voluntary action on social cohesion, especially in conflict and post conflict situations.

In any discourse about local ownership, development practitioners would be well served by opening up the debate to cover all forms of voluntary involvement on the part of citizens. No nation-wide immunization or illiteracy campaign or low cost housing programme has succeeded without massive voluntary participation on the part of local people. In the North the spirit of volunteerism underpinning such contributions is recognized, extolled and increasingly measured. In developing countries, on the other hand, the tendency is to refer to local voluntary action as "contributions in kind" - what people have to provide at local level to earn the right to donor "largesse" - rather than recognizing such action as building on deep-rooted traditions of people helping one another and providing an important ingredient for democratic governance. Without addressing this blind spot - identified in the title of a recent UNV publication as "Below the Waterline of Public Visibility" - the task of making significant headway towards the 2015 goal of reducing poverty levels by half will be much more difficult.

Incorporating voluntary action as a key form of local participation into the discussions on reforming technical cooperation can contribute in a significant way to enhancing the effectiveness of ODA and helping to reach out to a vast new constituency in donor and recipient countries. It is one way to meet the challenge highlighted at the July 2001 Geneva Round Table Meeting on Reforming Technical Cooperation of finding ways to implement change. It is also firmly rooted in the notion, cited in the report of the Meeting, that capacity development is a local process with technical cooperation providing an external stimulation.

Such stimulation has been provided over the past four decades by national and international volunteers from the South and the North channeled by official bilateral and multilateral as well as civil society organizations to development projects and programmes. It would be incorrect to ascribe to volunteers many of the shortcomings that are now associated with expatriate personnel. Most volunteer assignments are programme country led; are characterized by cultural sensitivity, equality, respect and trust; incorporate a component of learning and sharing; and contribute towards building-up global solidarity and understanding through the contacts generated. Building upon local voluntary effort through the involvement of national and international volunteers recruited by the various organizations engaged in this area of technical cooperation, from the South and the North, needs to be strengthened and not cutback. Certainly, many aspects of the volunteer cycle - from the identification of areas for volunteer involvement and of individuals with the appropriate social and technical skills to monitoring and evaluation arrangements - need to be kept under close scrutiny. Reforms in the way volunteers are programmed should accompany reforms underway for the entire system of technical cooperation. However, the case argued here is for an acceptance of the promotion of local participation through volunteerism, including volunteer placements, as a core principle and cross-cutting theme for much of technical cooperation. In this scenario, the issue of building up space for voluntary action can be considered as an option whatever the development theme or sector.